Future Loves Past Celebrates Debut Album with Lushfest

Future Loves Past's debut album, All The Luscious Plants gives "polish" a good name. That's not the only musical jargon the Tempe natives rehabilitate on All The Luscious Plants, but it's the first bit of it you'll have to confront when you listen to it; this is an album that rewards your attention immediately. It's a statement of purpose.

It's also occasion for this weekend's Lushfest, which FLP's Eric Palmer described aspirationally as "a huge party" when we talked to him about both earlier this week.

All The Luscious Plants doesn't necessarily sound like a debut album, but it came together like one. "We've been together for three years now, playing a lot of those songs, but we haven't had the money to record in a professional studio," Palmer says. "So by the time we did, we still had to go back and record all our old songs we'd been playing for a while."

Seven of the songs on Plants, then, have been following Future Loves Past around for a while. (First single "Grow Up Tall" is one of the new ones.) But the chance to record with Bob Hoag at Flying Blanket clarified things. "When we went in there we kind of did a once-over with [Hoag] and produced them all there, so they've all got that touch of the kind of pop music treatment from Bob. We already knew about that, so we kind of tried to do that before going in--tried to make them concise. It really comes across, because the album is only, like, 37 minutes long.

"It's totally awesome to finally get that kind of quality on it, because that's not something you can do without a professional, without hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear... [even] hearing my vocals through the way he put it through the microphone, and the compressors, and the soundboard, and the EQ, and how all the good detail comes out of it. I'm used to hearing myself in my bedroom, and it sounds like crap, so I'm like, 'Wow, that actually sounds pleasant.'"

Their newer material, Palmer says, is "going probably in a little bit more elaborate [direction]," but All The Luscious Plants is a finished product, a complete sentence--it's everything those more elaborate songs, or the Solar System concept album they plan to finally record later this year, would need to build on.

Including the very particular design sense, which is Palmer's: "For me, [design] is definitely inseparable from [the album]. I would probably never allow anyone else to do any of our album artwork... I already know exactly how I want it, and my art and design experience goes back way before music, for me. Sometimes I joke that I created the band so that I could make the album artwork.

"You go back a few years--like, four years ago, when I was in my first band, the artwork was probably better than the band."

The music's certainly caught up at this point, which is good. Because if All The Luscious Plants weren't a success, things might become a little uncomfortable at Lushfest, the full-blown event that's grown out of the band's record release party. On two stages over two days at The Sail Inn 19 other local bands will join Future Loves Past, who will play the new album (as well as their next album) in its entirety.